


Morning Session

by theleafpile



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Descriptions of Hell, Family Dynamics, Gen, Insight, Light Angst, Linda's POV, One-Shot, Philosophy, Therapy Session, a study in body language, pre-reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 10:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11228988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleafpile/pseuds/theleafpile
Summary: Linda just wants to understand her patient, to help him out of the grasp of the Devil persona.Can Lucifer be himself without also needing to be the Devil?





	Morning Session

“Tell me about hell,” Linda asked, smoothing down her dark skirt. Lucifer was the picture of poise, seated across from her with legs crossed, leaning back comfortably against the couch. He absentmindedly mirrored her, smoothing the lapels of the black Armani suit jacket.

She’d been at her wits end, consulting other psychiatrists and reading up on anything regarding anything within the confines of “high-functioning, non-bizarre delusional disorder.” None of her colleagues had ever had such a case, and she was no expert in the field. But she owed it to her patient to try, especially considering he had taken a shine to her, and she doubted he would agree to see someone more qualified. 

“Why?” Lucifer questioned, his eyes shining darkly. “Are you planning a visit? Got a ‘timeshare’ with one of the residents in the works? I never knew you were so bad,” he teased.

Whatever had happened to him had been so traumatic – even leaving scars, which she decided not to push until he brought them up himself – that his entire personality had become wrapped and entangled with this elaborate origin story. For this week’s session, Linda determined she wanted to see how far she could push the delusion, and see if she could gather any information about his family, or old stomping grounds. 

“I’m only asking because you spent so much time there, and I’d like to discuss why you left.”

He shifted slightly, just enough for Linda to see she’d hit something uncomfortable. Good. 

“Well, it was Hell, doctor. No one obviously wants to be there, including the Devil himself.”

“So. Why don’t you tell me what it was like? Make me understand why the Devil would choose to leave his own domain, a place where he was king, and everyone else was underneath his rule,” she asked, appealing to his narcissistic tendencies. 

“The ‘underneath’ thing hasn’t really changed,” he said, grinning. “Like I’ve told you before. I didn’t create Hell, I just worked there. Ruler by default, not choice.”

Another area she could probe. The absence of taking responsibility, not dealing with consequences. “Talk to me about choice. Why did you choose to come to Los Angeles?”

He sneered. “Choice is freedom. Free will. What you all disabuse so easily.”

Delusions of grandeur, avoidance. Though his posture had begun to sag, as though his shoulders ached. That suggested defeat, not unease.

Hmm.

“Does that bother you?”

Lucifer pulled his hand from the back of the couch to his lap, fingering his ring. “Of course it does, doctor.”

“Why?”

He paused, his chin jutting forward as though the words were forcing their way up his body and out of his mouth. “I fought for my freedom. It left me in chains.”

The visual of it hit Linda strongly, as though coming from the man himself. He had described his wings to her before, when they went missing – which then suddenly didn’t matter anymore, she had yet to get back to that topic – but now she could see, in her mind's eye, the man across from her with great white wings, he and them weighed down by chains. 

She blinked a few times, clearing the image from her mind.

“Part of normal development includes wishing for independence from our parents.”

He folded his hands in his lap and shifted to face her completely, opening his knees. This was a topic he wasn’t afraid to discuss. He nodded once, not answering.

“So you’re saying that because you fought so hard to be free of your father, that you deserve free will more than anyone else?”

She knew that wasn’t what he was getting at, but needed to press him so he could open up about his family. He didn’t answer at first, though he nearly started a sentence or two. Progress. He was thinking through his answers – they weren’t coming naturally, like the delusions he dealt with daily.

“What I’m saying is that you don’t appreciate it, fully.”

Linda nodded, encouraging. “And that’s why you punish people who use it to their advantage, at the expense of others?”

Another small nod. She needed more from him.

“People who do bad things deserve what’s coming to them, because it was their choice to do the wrong thing instead of the right one?”

He nodded again, though somewhat less vehemently, probably wondering where she was headed with this.

“And you were also punished for making the wrong choice?”

He swallowed, moving his tightly folded hands upwards an inch. At this point, he was covering his belt and the space immediately beneath. He was feeling vulnerable, protecting himself.

He spoke. “I wouldn’t say it was the wrong choice.”

She would have to come back to that. Pushing too hard, too fast would cause him to become angry, followed by an outburst – like when she had to patch a hole in her wall. She learned not to hit too hard, too many times, in the same spot.

“When your father kicked you out of the house, he sent you to hell, and then you left there to come here. And you’ve recently decided to make Los Angeles your ‘home.’ What was it about ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’ that prevented you from making those places your home, as well?”

He huffed, turning his face away from her. “The Silver City is dreadfully boring, and Hell… is no picnic for anybody.” He rolled his neck at her silence, as she waited for him to elaborate. “You want to know what Hell looks like. Fine.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, gathering her full attention to him. He wanted an audience. He wanted to see the fear on her face. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. She had already been a girl in his thrall, but no more of that. He needed to understand she was not intimidated by his story, behavior, or body.

He began without preamble. “Hell radiates outward from a center point, like a fungus. The center lies,” he paused, gaze faltering. “Where I hit. My impact crater. It altered the landscape considerably.”

So the trauma he experienced was profound enough for him to describe it like a meteor strike, something that could wipe out planets. Copy that.

“I lay for - well. I don't know. Eons. Too burned to move. Of course my wings were untouched.” He looked over her shoulder for a moment before correcting himself, his spine straightening. “I never begged Him for help, or to end my existence completely, though. I would never.”

Linda determined Lucifer’s wings represented his body, and the burning imagery his mind. Perhaps that was why he was so invested in his looks, his body, and what it could do. It was untouched. Perhaps the abuse he suffered, aside from the scarring, wasn’t physical. And he was very adamant that the scarring happened after he left. She had wondered if the delusion was the result of childhood sexual trauma, but the more she got to understand the man, the less she considered it a possibility.

“A result of the impact were endless fissures, deep gashes in the rock. I’d wander these for centuries. Some are so deep the sky looks like a sliver, a hair. Can't really go up there, of course. Gale force winds," he explained. "Rendered my wings useless." 

That struck a chord in him. His face hardened once more. "Inside each hall are endless cells, doorways to individual torments.”

Compartmentalizing issues. Check.

“I could access any of these, watch, torture the person myself. Sometimes –” he shook his head sadly. “The things I saw made me enraged. I’m not one to forgive, doctor. But there are some sins, some things people do to get into Hell, that are worse than others.”

She nodded. “There’s a gradient to the punishments? They fit the crime?”

“Of course.”

He said it so easily, she could almost believe him. Believe that he was the former ruler of the damned. C’mon, Linda, she chided herself. He’s all flesh and blood, seated across from you, seeking your help. Don’t get sucked into his fantasy.

“Did yours?”

Bodily he slammed himself shut, pulling his knees and hands together, though still leaning forward. Even his mouth closed. “No.”

“No? You told me once, that I could not presume to understand God’s intentions. What makes you so sure that his decision wasn’t the right one?”

That hurt him, she knew. It was in his eyes. He was going to become defensive, and that was hopefully enough to get him to show her a weak spot.

“All I ever wanted was to be my own man,” he started, but she cut him off before he could get back into the delusion.

“But are you not doing the same thing? Judging people and punishing them based on their actions?”

He shifted forward, menacingly. The anger was building. 

“I have never made any one of them do anything. Ever. They end up in Hell as a result of their own actions. I judge none.”

“You judge them enough to determine the punishment.”

More anger, the lines in his body tensing. “They do it to themselves. You wouldn’t believe some of the cells I’ve walked in to, doctor. They live their guilt for all eternity, the same moments again and again.”

Reliving trauma. Before she could change the question, he continued, his voice rising.

“Most people feel a moment of guilt, immediately following whatever it was they did to merit it. A brief, fleeting moment where they realized what they’d truly done. And I see that moment. It’s all I see. The neglectful mother discovering her dead infant in the crib. The drop of blood trickling down a man’s arm as he upholds the baseball bat he used to slaughter his wife. The split second the trigger goes past the point of no return and there’s a second, a second –” he clapped his hands together, “where they see it. They see the eternity waiting for them. That is what Hell provides.”

“Do you have such a moment?”

He wavered, hands still held together in the air between them. 

He let them fall, gripping his knees and sitting back. A power stance, elbows locked, sharp angles. “I don’t feel guilty about anything.”

“But you feel you have been punished most of all, by the highest authority, so anything you do here and now cannot affect you any more than what has already passed?”

He relaxed, though still held the stance. “What are you trying to ask me, doctor?”

“I’m wondering,” she dropped her gaze to the hem of her skirt, smoothing it out – allowing him not to be intimidated by her question – “if you agree that the punishment you endured matched the offense before it?”

He leapt to his feet, towering over her. She gasped, pushing backward into in her chair. It was not the reaction she had expected, and it took a moment before she caught her surprise.

“Nothing I did warranted punishment,” his voice hard, “I did nothing but ask for freedom, the freedom to make my own decisions - who I could love, where I could be, what I could do. I wanted to be my own person. That, doctor,” he lifted a finger, “ought not have caused my Fall.”

His chest was heaving. She needed him to become calm if they were going to continue, or else he may just walk out the door, like he had so many times before.

“You’re right, Lucifer.”

He let his hand fall.

“What happened to you was unfair. What your father did stemmed from his own fears, probably a fear of losing control over his children.”

Lucifer stepped back but did not yet sit. 

Redirect, counselor, before you lose him. 

“You never did tell me about your brothers and sisters.”

He tilted his head in confusion, but the anger had dissipated. He sat back down.

“Do you know what happened to them after you left? Were you able to keep in touch?”

He showed her the side of his face, looking toward the window. The blinds were drawn.

“They don’t keep in touch with me. I haven’t heard from anyone in a long time. Well,” he looked back at her, “except for one of my brothers, Amenadiel. He popped by to tell me to return to Hell.”

Well there’s a development. 

“Why did he want you to do that?”

“Because ever since I left, he’s been the one forced to manage it.”

Oh. His brother was suffering the abuse Lucifer once had. He wanted Lucifer to return to get out of the spotlight.

“No one else? Your mother?”

“My mother is locked in Hell.”

She really needed to break through his metaphor.

“So your father also punished your mother for her behavior?”

He nodded, eyes still on the blinds. “She deserves it.”

Present tense.

“Why is that?”

He finally returned his focus to her, as though realizing she were still in the room. “Because she watched me Fall, Linda. She did nothing.”

First name. Vulnerability. There is was.

She took in a deep breath.

“Leaving Heaven was not your choice. And for someone so,” (obsessed, she thought first), “infatuated with the idea of choice, that must have been very traumatizing.” He opened his mouth in rebuttal, but she ignored it. “And where you ended up was also not your decision. It’s perfectly understandable why you would not want to make that place your home, no matter how long you stayed.”

Lucifer relaxed further into the cushions.

“So why are you not prepared to also leave behind who you were there, as well?”

He shook his head, not understanding. 

“The Devil rules over hell. But you’re no longer in hell, you’re in L.A.. Land of reinvention. You could be anyone you want –” yourself, she wanted to scream ”– yet you still cling to being the Devil. Why is that?”

He shook his head again. He needed more reassurance before he could answer.

“The Devil is also a type of cell, is it not? The idea that you cannot leave your past decisions behind, that you must constantly relive, in every utterance of the title, the trauma of the fall?”

Silence fell between them, begging to be filled. She resisted the urge. She needed him to consider the question carefully. 

“It’s who I am,” he finally said.

She smiled fondly. “No," she corrected. "It doesn’t have to be, anyway. You have a choice, now, to be someone new.” She let the idea sink in for a few moments. “I don’t think you would want to return to the person you were before,” she leaned forward slightly, making him look in her the eyes. “Or would you?”

He returned his eyes to the blinds, hands flanking his thighs, sliding back and forth across the cushions. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”

“Who?” she asked quietly.

He blinked rapidly, his mouth turning into a hard line. “No.”

“It’s just a name, Lucifer.” She emphasized the last word.

He gripped the cushions tighter. “They aren’t just names, doctor. They’re titles.”

She searched her mind for names that could do that, and came up with nothing. 

“Like what?”

He began listing. “Youth, nature, learning, harmony, death, among others. They are ideas.”

“And yours?”

His voice rang like parched earth. “Venom. Destroyer. Poison.”

She knew people could be cruel, but hoped – truly, hoped – that a father wouldn’t name his own child something like that.

“And what does Lucifer mean?”

His mouth turned in a sneer, but she couldn't figure out why. “Light.” 

“That’s beautiful.”

Lucifer looked at her, curiosity written on his face. “Yes, well. I think so.”

“Could you still be ‘Lucifer’ without needing to also be the Devil?” She paused, allowing him time to process the question. “Are the two intertwined so tightly that someone who would choose to be known as ‘light’ and ‘morning star’ cannot be separated from the warden of damned souls?” She chided herself for her romantic language, but it seemed to get through to him best. 

He studied her. She tried to read the expression on his face, but could come up with only a hint of sadness. The lines in his face deepened, making him look older. 

“The light-bringer must always live in darkness.”

Another image flashed in her mind, of Lucifer floating, shrouded in the darkness of space, glowing wings unfolding from his back. He had a thoughtful expression on his face. None of the anger she saw here, trembling beneath the surface. Just loose limbs, a bit of whimsy in his easy posture. The man across from her had lost that youthfulness.

“Divine light brings in you lot like moths to a flame. It’s dangerous to get too close.”

He was pushing her away. That’s alright. They were making progress. 

“Why is that?” she asked. “Why don’t you allow people to get close to you?”

He opened then closed his mouth, smiling sadly. "Because," he said, and she saw something behind his dark eyes. Sympathy. 

“You burn.”


End file.
